Concept plug-in hybrid features plenty of new innovations

Where once the concept-car was a wacky vision of the future, Audi’s take on the “Car of Tomorrow” is forward-looking, but not too far. Call it, the “Car of Next Tuesday Around Eleven Thirty”.

The centrepiece of their display in Detroit is a showcar that could quite easily go into production with one or two tweaks, and the technology on display here might well show up in your next mid-level A4 sedan. It’s called the Audi Allroad Shooting Brake and, from the outside at least, it’s simply an Allroad wagon with two fewer doors.

You don’t have to delve deeply under the skin to find the first useful piece of technology – in fact, the shell of this car is a blend of aluminum and carbon-fibre polymer that reduces weight and is less expensive to manufacture than pure carbon-fibre. The centre sections of the 19-inch alloy wheels are themselves made of this reinforced carbon-fibre polymer, and while the centre-locks might not show up on anything outside of an R8 V10, the wheels themselves wouldn’t look out of place as part of a future S-Line package.

On the inside, Audi has a few interface improvements to their MMI interface, which include automatically-extending controls, and a touchscreen which operates more like the smartphone you use every day, with multi-touch functionality. And, speaking of smartphones, there’s also the why-don’t-we-have-this-yet Audi Phonebox, which is capable of inductively charging your phone: forget plugging it in, just jump in the car and throw it in the centre console, just like you do anyway.

Audi Allroad Shooting Brake plug-in hybrid concept

With a fuel door on the right side and a charging point on the left, the Allroad Shooting Brake comes with blended power under the hood. There’s quite a lot of thrust here, 408-horsepower to be exact, and Audi has cleverly mated the instant responsiveness of an electric drive with the high top-end power of a large-turbocharger four-cylinder. The 2.0L turbocharged gasoline engine makes 292 hp, and the twin electric motors fill in the rest.

Unlike ordinary Quattro, this Audi doesn’t use the gasoline engine to drive the rear wheels at all, but lets rear-drive be handled by the 114 hp rear engine. The rear engine can be called upon in slippery conditions, or propels the car entirely in electric-drive mode. Here, the 8.8 kWh lithium-ion battery is capable of providing up to 50 km of range, with a top speed of 130 km/h.

So, it’s a front-wheel-drive car that’s also all-wheel-drive, and occasionally rear-wheel-drive as well. Audi claims 1.9 litres per 100 km of fuel consumption when plug-in capabilities are used, and a zero to 100 km/h time of 4.6 seconds.

The new Audi S8 is revealed at the press preview of the 2014 North American International Auto Show January 13, 2014 in Detroit, Michigan.

While you wait for some of this tech to filter into your next car, Audi has two new models on display in Detroit as well. The first of these is an updated and face-lifted version of their A8 flagship sedan, which sees a bump in horsepower for its 4.0L turbocharged V8 to 435 hp.

More important for Audi’s corporate bottom line is the new Q3, a compact luxury crossover that slots in beneath the Q5 and Q7 to compete with the BMW X1 and the upcoming Mercedes-Benz GLA. Fitted with the ubiquitous 200 hp 2.0L turbocharged four-cylinder engine, Audi’s smallest crossover should be a fairly nimble drive that trades some of the handling dynamics of the A3 it’s based upon for better cargo room and a higher seating position. Front-wheel-drive is standard, and Quattro all-wheel-drive is of course available.